ONE MORE BULLET WON'T KILL YOU | ACTION FILM BLOG

Remember a few weeks back I blogged about three hong kong films having a North American release this year? I was a bit disappointed about how little there was promoting True Legend‘s release. It seems my internet whining has payed off as we now have a poster and a trailer for this film. Rejoice! Let’s have a comparison between how China and America handles the poster.

It’s fun just to compare these posters for the tone they seem to be going for. The hot orange in the background on the American poster gives me cartoonish vibes while the Chinese poster seems like this could be a dead-serious costume drama. One recent new rule I’ve found is when American companies try to sell an Asian action film in a poster, they must include a dragon stamped somewhere. Not that I’m complaining as it’s better than when they include the song “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas in the film somehow. *shudder*

The focus on individual characters is different too as my first glance at the bald-headed central figure (Andy On) gave me zombie vibes. Then again, the last time he worked with Yuen-Woo Ping was on Black Mask 2 and had a goofy get up then. The two apparently did not get along on the set so I suppose this is their hatred for each other visualized. Pretty gruesome.

We must be long past the days of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as there’s no predominant mention of Michelle Yeoh’s role (image or large text) wise. Remember ages ago when it was difficult not to find some blurb about her being a Bond girl? Sometimes those quotes were bigger than the film’s title. Times have changed! I guess Michelle being around 48 years old also doesn’t help your case. But i’m still excited about seeing her.

On a final poster note, True Legend was shown in China in 3D…sort of anyways as parts of the film were shot in 3D. I’d love to see “Put Your 3D Glasses On Now” printed in Mandarin on the screen but I can’t find any information about it being shown in 3D on the poster or anywhere else online for it’s American release. I’d say it’s safe to assume we are getting it how most film fans would want to see it, in traditional 2D.

The trailer can be viewed here. We get one lovely line spoken by the late David Carradine explaining how I suppose we really feels about Chinese people “Break their necks!”. Typical nonsense and kind of awkward but it’s not like this is the only film that has been marketed this way. The trailer is a bit too empty for me as it doesn’t really suggest how it will stand out from other martial art epics we’ve seen. The inclusion of a scene involving a vein growing on some muscular skin looks a bit more video gamey than probably intended. On a positive note, it does include this final goofy clip of Gordon Liu.

I’m sold on this film now

For our UK friends, it seems that True Legend has already has it’s premiere in September. Has anyone there seen it? Thoughts?